"In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Kotkin declared inner-city living to be a niche lifestyle preferred mostly by the young, the childless and the rich. The real action, he said, is now in suburbia and smaller cities like Fresno, California. Some have compared Kotkins views to those of David Brooks, the New York Times columnist who reduces the American city to a playground divided between such cliques as urban, latte-sipping hipsters, Volvo-driving, liberal inner-suburbanites andBrooks darlingsthe exurban Patio Man and Realtor Mom, who revel in their frontier paradise with childlike innocence.

Unfortunately, the debate over the creative class increasingly resembles a Fox News shouting match. Florida is portrayed as a big-government lackey who advocates reckless spending on museums and symphony halls, while Kotkin is accused of pandering to a social-conservative agenda."

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